Posts tagged “yaphet kotto”

To me, there is no defending this movie. It is the worst film of this franchise, and a terrible supposed ending for Freddy Krueger. As the progression of these films showed, Freddy transitioned from being a chilling icon of horror into being a jokey, cheesy clown, and this film goes right off the deep end of comedy in the most wretched ways. Worse yet is that that’s just the beginning of this movie’s problems. It tries to do something quirky and new, but the ideas it runs with are just so stupid that I cannot fathom how anyone embraced them as good ideas. What stuns me more is that this film was written by the same person, Michael DeLuca, who wrote my favorite horror movie of all-time – John Carpenter’s In The Mouth of Madness. Of course, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare has nothing at all to do with the horror genre.

Dream monster Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) has finally killed all the children of his hometown of Springwood. One amnesiac teenage survivor, known only as John Doe (Shon Greenblatt), is allowed to escape so that Freddy may expand his power beyond the town. John soon comes into the care of a youth shelter and Dr. Maggie Burroughs (Lisa Zane), who has a forgotten past of her own as Krueger’s own daughter. This revelation is what can facilitate Freddy’s freedom to engulf the world in nightmares. However, she discovers the demonic origin of his powers and meets him head-on in a final showdown.

This is a cluttered mess of a movie, but I’ll tell you what I like about it which isn’t much. Since Freddy’s Dead is set a decade in the future, there’s obviously a detailed history that we are unaware of, and thus, it creates an inherent mystery. It lays a foreboding mystique over Krueger’s motivations and schemes. Of course, this film squanders all of that hint of potential by not exploring any of that untold history at all. It concerns us solely with this bland, boring mystery about Freddy’s kid and Krueger’s origins. The misdirection of who is Freddy’s kid is terribly weak and completely uninteresting. John is a teenager, and it is stated in the movie that Freddy’s child was taken away from him in 1966 – thirty-five years before the time this film is set. Even then, Freddy was probably already dead by the time John was born. There was an early idea that John would have been Jacob, Alice’s son from The Dream Child, but that is clearly impossible as he’s too old. Maggie being Freddy’s daughter is also a completely new thing that comes out of nowhere. Obviously, this is a brand new thing created for this movie alone, but it doesn’t take into the thought that if Freddy had this child out there all this time that he would’ve taken advantage of her far earlier than now.

This is indicative of how this film presents ideas and questions, but the filmmakers put in no time or effort to think them through. They don’t pull from the established continuity or characters we’ve connected with through the previous five movies. While a few of the films have introduced new ideas to Freddy’s origins, they’ve been largely smart ideas that flow organically from what had come before. These filmmakers also don’t rationalize the motivations or thought processes of its characters to have anything really make any sense. Beyond that, it constantly embraces the ridiculous as if this was meant to be a horribly bad comedy. The story has a very shaky foundation, and anything built upon it is constantly crumbling apart. By the end, it’s an eye sore of a disaster.

Also, this film brings up an intriguing question of whatever happened to Alice from The Dream Master and The Dream Child? This character that defeated Freddy twice, and clearly had the power to keep him at bay is never eluded to once in this movie. Freddy’s wiped out the child population of Springwood, and turned it into a bizarre wasteland of delusional adults. Did Alice get killed, or did she just runaway and let it happen? If Freddy killed her, that would be an extremely pivotal thing for fans and audiences to know and actually see. If she turned her back on him, that’s also a story I’d like to see explored. Why would his biggest, most powerful nemesis not be there to combat him to the bitter end? These questions have no remote answer to them. Instead, we’re burdened with a couple of lead characters that I couldn’t give a damn about.

I cannot say that Shon Greenblatt was a very good casting choice. He’s not terrible, but he just has nothing charismatic or special to offer in this role. He has practically the same expression through every single scene regardless of he’s confident, angry, afraid, or confused. He fails to elicit any sense of caring from me. This is also due to how stupid and flat his character happens to be. He exercises no perceptive intellect, and kind of comes off as arrogant once he thinks he’s Freddy’s kid. He forms this conclusion based on nothing definitive, and just jumps around from one idiotic, self-important conclusion to another. Neither Greenblatt nor the direction do anything to make this a character you’re going to care about one way or another.

Lisa Zane’s character is also someone I couldn’t really care about. The film takes almost an hour before it starts going into any detail about Maggie, and even then, it’s extremely minimal stuff just to facilitate a weak connection between her and Freddy. Beyond that, I ask myself the questions of why am I supposed to care at all about this brand new character that this film takes next to time to develop? What’s so special about this character that she is meant to be the one to put the supposed final nail in Freddy’s coffin? And again, why the hell aren’t we following Alice Johnson charge headlong into a final, epic battle with Freddy? The filmmakers didn’t need to manufacture a child for Freddy in order to explore his back story, and even that idea is so lazily implemented. No one puts forth any effort to make that anything an audience should invest themselves in. Most importantly, Lisa Zane really does nothing with this character. The performance is very hollow, and like Greenblatt, she essentially has one facial expression for every emotion in every scene.

The only cool and bad ass member of this cast is Yaphet Kotto, and that’s because he is Yaphet Kotto. I don’t think it’s possible for him not to be awesome in any role. They should’ve made the film more about his character, who is only named Doc. He’s the one that figures everything out, and has the knowledge and perception to battle Krueger on his own ground. Unfortunately, he probably has the least amount of screentime, and his talent is almost entirely wasted opposite such bland characters and cast members. With this film, it seems that the less significant your character is, or the less screentime you are given, the better your performance will be.

For instance, this film’s new set of teens are pretty good characters filled by charismatic actors. The most notable among them is Breckin Meyer in his first feature film role. You can see all of his signature personality and talent on display here. Lezlie Deane is the most proactive of them all as Tracy showing a lot of fight and toughness. She doesn’t take much attitude from anyone. Ricky Dean Logan has a nice dash of attitude while still being quite likable as Carlos, the kid with the hearing aid. Freddy ends up screwing with him royally via his hearing aid by amplifying every little sound to deafening levels. It’s too bad that it’s so undermined by the absolutely cartoonish behavior of Freddy.

Knowing that even Englund himself agreed to make this movie like a Bugs Bunny cartoon makes my head hurt. Up until this point, he was able to maintain some integrity with the character, but here, it just all gets flushed right down the toilet. There is no menace, no sense of a frightening killer anywhere within this movie. Englund jumps the proverbial shark with this performance making Krueger a total, cringe inducing cartoon that really craps all over the entire franchise. The make-up job also follows that mentality with a horribly cheap and rubbery prosthetics job constantly exposed in bright light.

The visual effects, in general, are largely bad. They tried to use some low budget CGI, but it looks no better than mid-grade optical effects, at best. There are a few shots that are fine, but the visual effects do take an obvious nose dive decline in quality from the last few films. Mixed with the poor 3D sequence, it just becomes cringeable to look at. The dream demons themselves are horrendous and laughable in their brief appearance. The practical effects from master John Carl Buechler are very good in most respects, but the film is so terribly light on kills and good imagination that there’s hardly much of a showcase for Buchler’s brilliant talents.

I really like the soundtrack for this film to the point where I tracked it down years ago on CD. It has many great tracks mainly from the Goo Goo Dolls, and a solid end titles track from Iggy Pop. I can’t say I’m all that keen on how, early on, the film drives this soundtrack right into the blatant forefront. Every few minutes another song kicks in undermining the score. For certain types of films, this sort of thing works, but for what should be a horror movie, it doesn’t at all. Of course, even the score that this film has is almost entirely dismissible and hardly noticeable.

The third act of this movie is such garbage. First off, the horrible 3D gimmick of Maggie putting on 3D glasses to enter Freddy’s mind is face palmingly bad. Again, Freddy’s a horribly bad joke in this movie, and so, I don’t give a damn about his back story at this point. Maggie is a hollow, boring protagonist that I care even less about. So, I simply don’t care about her traversing through Freddy’s memories, or seeing how he became a serial killer or a dream demon. The only highlight is Alice Cooper appearing in a cameo as his father, but it’s nowhere near being a saving grace. The entire fight between Maggie and Freddy is just crap. It’s essentially a street fight with conventional weapons with absolutely no fantastical qualities whatsoever. After all of the supernatural, paranormal, metaphysical ways they’ve defeated Freddy in the past five movies, these filmmakers resort to a damn pipe bomb. Maggie pulls him into the real world, and blows him up with a pipe bomb. You have got to be kidding me. How creatively bankrupt must you be to go forward with that, and have it end with Maggie being all smug about it? I’ll take the toxic waste bath in Jason Takes Manhattan over this insulting garbage. At least that showed a semblance of imagination and effort.

Any of the lesser grade sequels could at least be chalked up to poor execution, but this movie is a disaster from the concept and script onward. I don’t think this is a well directed movie by Rachel Talalay at all. It’s not well conceived, not well written, and it’s not well acted where it counts. Freddy’s Dead bares no resemblance to a horror movie at all. It doesn’t even put forth the smallest effort to establish a mood or atmosphere conducive to scaring even the most timid audience. There’s so much cartoony garbage stinking up the movie that you couldn’t break out of it if you tried. This movie SUCKS SO FUCKING BAD! I strongly avoid using that kind of profanity in my reviews, but when a movie elicits that strong of a negative emotion from me, there is no way I could express my vehement disdain any other way. It’s like a middle finger pointed straight at the audience in crappy 3D. This film also has no sense of transition. There are a few scenes that just abruptly end, jarring us into the next scene without a single mind towards a segue. You feel the scene is building towards something more, but it takes a sharp turn into a completely different scene. This is bad plotting, poor pacing, and just sloppy editing. Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare has no qualities that could possibly redeem it because it was so royally screwed from its inception.

From here, the only salvation for Freddy Krueger was Wes Craven and Jason Voorhees. The first was a creative salvation, and the second was a financial salvation. Sure, this movie was a box office success, but there is nothing within this film that deserved that success. It is one of the absolute worst sequels I have ever seen, regardless of genre. I would log it next to Alien vs. Predator because it is that insulting in its ideas, and piss poor in its filmmaking competency. Also, this film absolutely did not need an obnoxious cameo by Roseanne and Tom Arnold. They standout like a sore thumb, but thankfully, it’s only for a minute. However, it’s just another stamp of the filmmakers not taking this film seriously or respecting where this franchise came from. Even separated from the franchise, this is still a terrible movie through and through. So many of those creatively involved with it should be ashamed that they did this to Freddy Krueger. Instead of shifting gears and bringing the icon back to his serious roots of horror, they plunge off the deep end, and drown him in a comedy sewage. I could go on and on calling this film every bad name in the book, but I think I’ve said plenty. Thank goodness that Wes Craven would bring respectability back to the franchise with New Nightmare, which I did review last October. Skip this movie and watch that one. It’s a massively, exponentially superior film on every level.

Ridley Scott’s Alien is a remarkable classic that was kind of hard for me to appreciate fully until now. I did see the director’s cut screening in October of 2003, but it didn’t have the intended effect at the time. However, thanks the Cinemark theatre chain, I was given the chance to see Alien in its original theatrical cut. I went into the screening consciously putting myself into the proper mindset intending to experience it the right way. I have always appreciated the filmmaking and artistic talents of the movie, but now, I can connect with it on a level of beautifully crafted horror and suspense.

When commercial towing vehicle Nostromo, heading back to Earth, intercepts a distress signal from a nearby planet, the crew are under obligation to investigate. After landing on this hostile planet, three crew members – Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), first officer Kane (John Hurt), and navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) – set out to discover the origin of the signal which Lieutenant Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the ship’s computer soon decipher it as not a distress call but a warning. Onboard a derelict alien spacecraft, Kane discovers a chamber filled with thousands of alien eggs, and in investigating too closely, he is attacked by a parasite. When he is brought back to the Nostromo, the crew has no idea the danger they have brought upon themselves as this parasite soon gives birth to a vicious organism that is bred for only one purpose – death.

The strongest quality of this film that struck me was indeed the structure and pacing. While for a modern audience it might be too methodical, Scott makes every slow burning moment count for something. It’s all building towards something while establishing mood, atmosphere, character, or story. The best result from this structure is that there are segments where Scott gives the audience a sense of false security. This is best reflected in both after the facehugger dies and relinquishes its hold on Kane, and when Ripley has safely escaped aboard the shuttle at the end. You feel as if the danger has past, but especially with the former, you feel like another shoe is waiting to drop creating this lurking uncertainty. There’s still a long way to go in this film, and you know something much more threatening is waiting to emerge. When the ship ascends from the planet, it’s signaling the elevation in threat for these characters and the audience. And this film repeatedly elevates things to a new, unexpected level.

Scott also does an amazing job immersing an audience into the subtle sense of isolation and unsettling calm of the Nostromo. This has as much to do with the cinematography as it does the amazing sound design. The ship always has this ambient sound of probably the power running through it, which further unnerves an audience. And when things get loud, it gets very loud to evoke the terror and visceral rawness of the moment. This all creates a contrast of audio where Scott makes things extremely low and quiet when he wants to engage your attention and put you on the edge of your seat. Then, he blasts something onto the soundtrack to jar you out of your seat. I don’t find this to be jump scares. This is an excellent manipulation of suspense and tension to effectively and skillfully scare an audience. It’s putting you right in there with the unnerving feeling these characters are experiencing.

How Alien is shot is perfect in its use of wide compositions to reflect scope and solitude early on, especially during the excursion to the derelict spacecraft, and later on, how the cinematography moves in closer to highlight the claustrophobic nature of the Nostromo. Even more intense is when Scott has the shot get right into the actor’s faces during the peak of fear and terror to where you can see every bead of sweat on their skin. There’s some great and beautiful camera work from the large movements revealing the Space Jockey and using steadicams for sweeping movements. Yet, I also love the subtle handheld work that creates a sense of unease and rawness at times. The lighting schemes also create the signature Ridley Scott noir mood and atmosphere. Light and shadow are used to stellar effect enhancing all the unnerving, heart pounding sequences, and Scott is known for immersing his films in thick darkness. As the immediacy of everything reaches its apex as the self-destruct is counting down, the blasting exhaust vents and flashing lights intensely reflect the chaotic nature of the third act. It’s shocking to me that director of photography Derek Vanlint has an extremely short filmography shooting only six films over a thirty-four year span. Apparently, the bulk of his career was spent on television commercials. What he did here would make you believe he had a largely notable film career because it was indeed the work of a master cinematographer.

Ridley Scott was very much inspired by the sort of “used future” production design of Star Wars. Instead of the clean and polished aesthetics of a 2001: A Space Odyssey, he wanted something that felt gritty, textured, and lived in. The Nostromo is a very utilitarian craft with very few sleek designs. It was created to be functional and practical to maintain a sense of relatable realism for the audience. It has the feel of a factory, oil rig, or submarine with all of its enclosed tight spaces and metal gratings. And the design of the alien spacecraft and all things related to the Xenomorph by H.R. Giger are truly alien in all aspects. It has a dark, gothic elegance to it. Giger always meshes together this sexualized aesthetic with his fascinating and twisted designs, and it creates this unsettling undercurrent of sexuality to all of these creatures that victimize our characters. Many have read a lot into these elements, but for me, it simply makes for a frightening and completely unique biology. The Alien feels threatening in every way with all of its fanged teeth, exoskeleton design, and ultimately, it’s black as night sheen. This is a creature meant to inhabit the darkness as an animalistic hunter. How Ash describes it as the “perfect organism” has always struck me powerfully selling every single-minded quality about it. It will use you to breed, and then, the others it will kill. It has no other purpose to exist but to destroy. I also love how the film constantly takes you by surprise as we witness the Alien’s life cycle. First, it’s this tiny little creature, but next time we see it, it’s seven feet tall! There’s an added shot in the director’s cut that I always liked when Brett goes looking for Jones the cat, and while he’s cooling himself off with the dripping condensation, there’s a shot of it hanging from the chains above. This is before we know what the Alien now looks like, and so, you wouldn’t pick up on it unless you already knew. Now, it did take a little bit of effort to put Prometheus out of my mind just to experience the originally intended mystique and fascination with the Space Jockey, but I was able to get there. I still enjoy Prometheus, but I wanted to experience Alien in its purest form.

Now, despite this being a serious film of horror and atmosphere, the interactions of these characters portrayed by this excellent cast create some much needed moments of levity. I constantly found what Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton were doing to be immensely pleasing and funny. Parker and Brett are these two jokers who maintain the ship’s functions, and feel quite underappreciated for their hard work who try to leverage that out with some delightful exchanges. Kotto and Stanton have a great chemistry that brings some rich personality into the fold.

Tom Skerritt is very solid as Captain Dallas. He has that sense of authority and responsibility which clearly has him stand out as a leader. Yet, he’s fallible making decisions out of passion instead of adhering to regulations, but also, owning up to those decisions and errors. At the end of it all, he’s just a guy who wants to do his job and get home, but is forced to deal with something beyond his experience that ultimately does terrify him.

Then, we’ve got Sigourney Weaver who was an unknown talent at the time, and that played to an audience’s surprise. This one person that they are unfamiliar with in the cast is actually the heroin of the piece, and Weaver shows her stellar talent every moment she’s on screen. She holds her own opposite everyone very well projecting authority, strength, conviction, and decisiveness as Ellen Ripley. Yet, of course, the absolutely soul shattering terror that Ripley experiences is powerful through Weaver. She is vulnerable, but she can fight through it for her own survival.

This is unlike the constantly panicked Lambert who paralyzes with fear in the face of the alien, but her fear is entirely genuine and real with Veronica Cartwright’s fantastic talents making it something other than a potentially annoying character. Many would find themselves reacting like Lambert does, and it’s a testament to the characters that are able to keep their fear and emotions in check to carry onward.

Ian Holm’s performance is brilliant. It’s one of those things where you pick up on more in repeat viewings after you know the twist of Ash. You see the sinister probing eyes that observe a situation like it’s some lab experiment. Once you know who Ash is and what his purpose happens to be you can see his secret intent, especially during the chestburster scene. This twist is carefully setup throughout the movie in how he repeatedly enables the safe passage of the alien aboard the ship.

The great thing about these characters is that, despite the futuristic setting on a spacecraft, these are relatable people. They seem plucked straight out of our time and lives as rugged, blue collar space truckers. They’re regular people just doing a regular job, but it’s only that they’re towing ore across interstellar space instead of a highway or the like. They have realistic relationships such as Parker and Brett having some friction against the bridge officers because they get paid less even though the ship wouldn’t work without them. These people all have conflicts, friendships, and complicated dynamics between them, and this is further aided by very realistic and honest dialogue. The film surely doesn’t take time to explore the depth of these characters, but it is their behaviors and interactions that inform us of all we need to know about each one of them. That’s really how you write an ensemble movie, much like John Carpenter’s The Thing. You don’t need to get their life stories, you just need fully realized characters portrayed by great, suitable actors. And I would be remised if I didn’t mention John Hurt here. While he has the shortest screentime of anyone here, he puts in a solid performance that has a few moments of levity, but overall, is as authentic and strong as anyone else here.

The late Jerry Goldsmith seemed to regularly have conflicts with the filmmakers he worked with on how his scores should be crafted. Oddly, I find that in these cases, what it is that he’s pushed towards creating is ultimately the better choice for the film overall. Here, we get some great cues with the main theme being the best which exudes an aura of mystery, intrigue, and spookiness. It’s a subtle melody that does a lot to make things feel lightly ominous and dangerous without ever being overt. Simplicity can sometimes do so much in conjunction with how a film is shot and plotted. The music that Goldsmith composed here is exceptionally effective even if how most of it was used went against how he thought it should be.

Usually, when you know a horror film well enough, knowing where the scares are coming and everything, it tends to become less effective. However, upon this theatrical screening, many moments were still startling and scary. I really feel that experiencing Alien in the immersive environment of a movie theatre is the best way to do it. Maybe if you have a large HDTV and a stellar surround sound system, you could achieve that effect, but seeing all of the visual mastery on that large cinema screen was more than I could have imagined. It just gave me the amplified experience I was looking for with this movie, and why I was compelled and excited for this experience. Now that I’ve had that experience, my home viewing experience will be richer and more engaging.

It is undeniable that Alien is an eternal classic, but now, I am able to hold it up to that level of awe and recognition myself. Scott took what was a B-movie horror idea and turned it into an A-grade picture full of masterfully crafted artistry in all aspects with the cast being a glowing example. Ridley Scott is known for taking great care in creating immersive worlds not just on film, but for the actors and crew to live inside of. He locks you into this enclosed maze of a dark spaceship where the Alien could be hiding anywhere, and you feel the claustrophobic tension eating away at you. It can be a haunting, disturbing film for many, and while it has violence and blood, it is strategically used to intense effect. The same can be said about the Alien itself – only seen it shadows, in pieces. Scott only once or twice gives you a full fledged look at it. He keeps it like a startling nightmare – brief glimpses that horrify, much like Jaws. Unlike Jaws though, it wasn’t out of a necessity of the creature not working or being well designed, it was an artistic decision that worked brilliantly. There’s a lot of crap that was spawned from this film with bad sequels, poorly conceived crossovers, and a prequel that has proved divisive for many. Still, I can watch this film as a self-contained entity, and when done so, you can immensely appreciate that Ridley Scott and his vast team of highly talented artists and filmmakers made a stunning and iconic piece of science fiction horror.